


Fairness and Parts

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:28:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaiju sex pollen chocolate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairness and Parts

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a cute or fun fic. Yeah, I mean, the summary. Yeah, I know kaiju sex pollen. I know it looks like this fic might be aiming for cute and fun, but this fic is definitely not. 
> 
> We're starting out a emotional incest dubcon and burying the needle in body horror body loathing rape survivor self-blame explicit nonconsensual sex territory. We're also working on the assumption that Tamsin died when Mako was in her teens, rather than in 2024/2025. Stacker has nobody left but Herc and Mako. 
> 
> Basically, you are warned on the _**strongest possible terms**_.

One, it shows up with the rest of her mail. 

...

Media Relations still screens Mako's mail -- threats and sexual propositions go to security; pictures drawn by kids go to her. Media Relations looks over gifts, too, because regulations say anything valued at over $30 USD, adjusted for inflation, can't be accepted. That leaves plenty of room. When Mako was little, the gifts tended to be knitted scarves or mittens or hats, all of which went to charity, except for a pair of scarves, hand-knitted, one small for Mako, one large for you, both in Coyote Tango's slate-gray, with a surprisingly good version of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps eagle in white at the bottom. Tamsin talked you into letting Mako keep them, and for years, when you were stationed at a Shatterdome with a cold winter, you wore yours and Mako wore hers. For years, Mako wore gray mittens, so that her scarf and mittens would match.

...

These days, the gifts tend to be mostly from companies that want to say that their product is used by engineers at the PPDC. 

Consequently, on her desk in Long Beach,Mako has a mugful of new and improved engineer pens that only work half the time, plus a picture of you and Tamsin that showed up years ago and that she's taken from Shatterdome to Shatterdome because she loves it so much. You and Tamsin are as big as Coyote Tango, and Tamsin has more piercings in her face than she actually ever had: plus, a glass jar of paper stars that an eight year old in Hong Kong made while in the hospital with her mom, who had been sick with cancer -- for that one, after Media Relations verified the story, Mako took a handwritten note around and all the Jaeger pilots on station and asked everybody to sign. Their ground crews kicked in some pieces, and together, they put together a care package. Clipped to the gooseneck lamp on Mako's desk is a picture that they got back, with the eight-year old wearing a jacket with a Striker patch sewn on the front and mid-chemotherapy mother in a Nova Hyperion crew cap. They're holding their hands up in V-signs and smiling. 

So it happens. Mako gets gifts in the mail from time to time, and when she sees the chocolate along with a bunch of children's cards and drawings of kaiju, Mako assumes that it's Media Relations, being nice and passing it on rather than eating it themselves. She even sends an e-mail to her media handler, just to confirm, but gets an out-of-office message back. She calls. Nobody at the office knows whether Kelsey handled it before going on vacation. 

...

Two, not being stupid, actually being cautious, because Kelsey has been her media handler across four continents since Mako was an eleven year old terrified orphan who froze up anytime she saw a camera or phone raised her way, and Kelsey gently trained her out of it with a mix of candy and encouragement, so that Mako knew the basics of press interaction even if she would never, ever enjoy it -- Kelsey trained her right, drilling into her over and over, that there are a lot of strange people in the world. 

So Mako runs it by K-science. 

They said they haven't seen the chocolates before, which was a slip-up by Media Relations, but no harm, no foul. They put it through the spectrometer for Mako, run the same tests that they would otherwise run. Dr. Gottlieb personally remembers showing her the printout with the lines indicating elevated presence of silicone-based biocompounds, but at this minimal level of contamination probably just meant that the chocolate factory was turning out kaiju novelty bone powder lollipops the week before. Probably cleaner than a lot of the stuff on shelves. 

Plus, in addition to the three that they slice slivers off to test, Newt pops an entire chocolate one into his mouth and chews it whole, noisily.

Dr. Gottlieb remembers it. Gesizler remembers it. Raspberry cream, tasted fine. Remembers it having been really good, actually. Nothing weird or off that he could taste, and the letter clipped to the box said that it was a family business. They were starting up artisanal chocolate making and wanted to share some to the famous Mako Mori. 

Mako also remembers that she gave Dr. Gottlieb his choice of the chocolate for helping, and he picked up a walnut caramel. She gave him the other walnut caramel, too, so that he could have it with Vanessa when they had lunch together. Both of the Gottliebs had the chocolate. 

Both of the Gottliebs were fine. 

...

You're going through this list, Stacker, because you want to make it clear: this wasn't Mako's fault. This wasn't Herc's fault. You don't blame them for this. 

This -- 

...

Mako did everything right, and when she'd done everything she could figure to determine that it was safe, she shared it with you. 

You think about that, and your chest hurts: kind Mako, generous Mako wanting to share with the people she loved. Long Beach in 2022 wasn't a free port. Real chocolate, good chocolate was hard to find and generally rationed: how many other children who had lost family and home would have shared an entire box like she did? How many other children who spent the better part of a year at a group home would do that? It took you a long time to convince the government, then PPDC to let you adopt her out of there -- in the end, you did it without PPDC authorization and dared them to get rid of you. You knew you'd made the right decision when you saw, during the first few weeks, the way Mako used to hunch over her food, shoulders curled in, eating rapidly but with precision so that she wouldn't have her food pulled away for messiness -- the expression on her face when she came up for air made you angry and sad at the same time. 

It took a long time for her to stop hunching over her food. At Shatterdomes, there was always enough to eat. There was always food down in the canteen. 

_You got a good one_ , Herc tells you regularly. 

Occasionally, after saying that, he'll look off, thinking about Chuck. 

...

So Mako knew you and Herc were probably having dinner together in quarters. She came up. She knocked. When you called out that the door was unlocked -- who else would it be? -- she opened it, stuck her head in, asked softly, "May I come on?"

This was in Long Beach, where Marshal's quarters were a suite of rooms with separate bedroom and kitchenette and living area. You and Herc were sitting on the couch, beers in hand, watching a sporting event being made less comprehensible by the fact that Herc had been trying to explain the Australian version of it. Eventually, he gave up. The two of you were just talking a little shop. Nova Hyperion's latest kill. Kaiju cultist activity. 

"Come in, Mako," you said, smiling at her. 

Mako smiled back at you. 

She took off her shoes while balancing against the wall by the door, holding the box in her right hand. 

...

In retrospect, in your memory, the sound of her closing and locking the door behind her looms large: in reality, how loud could it have been? Long Beach Shatterdome didn't have the huge, heavy metal doors other Shatterdomes did. So Mako locked the door behind her and came to the couch to show you what she had: she took the lid off the chocolates, and after you and Herc admired them appropriately, Mako went to the kitchenette and got a knife to cut each of the chocolates up into quarters, so that everybody could have a piece, and then people could go back for seconds of their favorite. 

You remember the look Herc shot you while Mako had her head bowed over the chocolate, mouth open a little with concentration because she wanted to make the pieces equal-sized. Herc smiled. You smiled back at him. 

Mako was nineteen, brilliant, fearless and fast in the Kwoon. Respected on Shatterdomes on four continents, a prodigy at the Academy with thirty-eight drops and thirty-eight kills. Nobody has come close since. Now, though, tongue stuck in the corner of her mouth, face turned up in concentration -- still a child. Herc has a sip of his beer. Both of you fight down your smiles, and both of you go back to watching Mako concentrate very, very hard on being fair. 

...

Here is what happens, though. Here is why you have gone back and reconstructed every step of the afternoon beforehand. 

You have a couple pieces of the chocolate. Mako has a few pieces. Herc has a few pieces. You point out that beer isn't the best accompaniment for chocolate, and Mako makes a face, and Herc laughs because it's clear that she had been thinking it from the beginning, but was being polite. So you get up and go to the kitchenette and boil water in the kettle for three mugs. You make yours and Herc's with milk and sugar, Herc's even milkier than yours, the way he likes it. Mako takes her without either, so you come back with two mugs in one hand and Mako's other, so that nobody is confused

What do you see when you come back? 

Mako sitting on the couch next to Herc, her cheeks a little pink. The television is still on, and Mako is holding her palm up to Herc; his head is bent down a little, and you watch as he touches his tongue to her fingertips, then traces her middle finger up to where it meets her palm. He looks up at him, and she smiles encouragingly at him, so he eats the chocolate out of her hand. Mako goes on smiling, goes on unbuttoning her blouse with her other hand, and with chocolate smeared on his mouth, Herc leans up and kisses her. 

You are standing with tea in your hands; your best friend and your adopted daughter are kissing each other other on the couch. Mako is nineteen; Herc is forty-two. Three years before, Herc got his brother booted out of the Rangers because he saw, in the Drift, his brother raping a woman. Five minutes before, Herc was companionably listening to Mako talk about the problems of getting good neural relays from the Anchorage plant. At least three batches out of every hundred had a faulty coupling, and it made muscle strand testing, Mako had said, almost impossible. Herc was following along, but at the end of the day, he was a Jaeger pilot, not an engineer. 

Now, Mako's cheeks are pink; Herc's cheeks are pink. Mako makes a noise because Herc isn't kissing her as deeply as she'd like, so she stops unbuttoning her blouse to put both her arms around him and pull him on top of her. 

What do you do, Stacker Pentecost? Do you turn away? Do you stop them? Do you have any idea that something is wrong? 

No, you do not. 

Instead, you walk over to the coffee table. 

You bend down low to put the mugs onto the table. Then you sit down on the couch behind Mako, and you pull her arms off Herc and hold them to her sides, so that Herc can finish unbuttoning her blouse. Mako smiles and turns her face up to you, and you watch Herc getting the last button of her blouse. 

He starts on the belt to her uniform trousers. 

...

Later, they find out that the biochemical compound that the chocolate had been laced with -- it's only effective on minds that have undergone the minute, tiny alterations that extended exposure to Drift brings. Characteristic neurochemical couplings. 

Mako felt it first because she weighed the least. 

Herc felt it next because he was the next heaviest and had been in the Drift more recently than you or Mako. 

...

Later, you realize that it had been building. 

The three of you had been sitting closer to each other on the couch, closer than you normally would, your right knee against Mako's left. After the third piece of chocolate, Mako got up, pulled a blanket from the back of the couch and spread it over her lap. You don't remember thinking anything about it, because you usually kept your quarters a good few degrees colder than she liked hers, and when you call the memory up and look over, you realize that half of the blanket had been on Herc's lap. Even before you'd gone up to get tea, she'd been touching him, hadn't she? Herc had a still, slightly glazed look on his face, but how can you throw any stones, Stacker Pentecost? 

When you got up to go to the kitchen, before you walked away from the couch, you touched the back of Mako's neck over the collar to her PPDC blouse. You touched Herc's over the collar to his vest. 

You don't know why you did it, but you remember the warmth of their skin under your hands. You remember that Mako turned and smiled at you. Herc closed his eyes and sighed.

This is why, you think, Mako was on the couch kissing Herc openly when you came back. She took the touch as instruction. 

Every time you think about it, you feel sick to your stomach. 

...

When Mako's blouse and trousers are off, she twists out of your arms, turns around, and straddles you. 

Her right hand is against your left cheek; she looks you in the eyes, and you breathe out, suddenly hesitant, aware on some level that you're holding your adopted daughter and the only things she' s wearing is a tank top and knickers. It doesn't feel right. You don't know why, but you can't articulate it, and hand still on your cheek, Mako sees that you're not quite ready to kiss her on the mouth. Consequently, she kisses the side of your neck -- just her lips at first, and when you don't push her off, she follows with her tongue, which feels warm and wet. You make a noise in your throat, and she kisses your throat where the noise came from. She undoes the second button of your collared shirt, then kisses a little lower. She runs her tongue over the part of your collarbone showing over your undershirt. 

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Herc stripping his shirt off and unbuckling his belt. When Mako was living with you, you got into the habit of taking your shoes off at the door. You kept it after she moved into her own quarters, and you see Herc sit down and take his boots off. When he's done, he settles behind you on the couch. You feel his hands on your waist, his breath against the back of your neck. He kisses a place that Mako had kissed and left wet from your mouth: then, over your shoulder, Herc kisses Mako. From very close, you watch. 

And then -- 

Then, Mako kisses you. 

Her mouth tastes like chocolate, and she kisses you thoroughly while getting the buttons of your shirt undone. Herc helps, pulling it over your shoulders and past your elbows, and after that, Mako pulls away, and Herc is kissing you. You've never kissed a man before, and you find that his mouth fits against your own, is roughly the same size, roughly the same width. In contrast, Mako's mouth is small and tastes like chocolate, soft at first, but underneath, all teeth and heat and her hands on your shoulders, digging nails in so that you'll kiss her deeper. You go from Herc's tongue to Mako's lower lip, then back again, then vice versa. Mako's hands are on your shoulders; Herc's hands are on your waist. When they have you stripped down to bare skin, you feel Herc's dog tags against your back, and you can see Mako's hanging down the front of her tank top. 

So you help Mako out of her tank top. 

You watch as she undoes the clasp on her bra, and then you lean over and kiss her again, sliding your hand up her side. When you run your fingers over the side of her breast, you feel the way she presses against you and shifts, so that your thumb lies against her nipple. You lift your thumb up, run it over the nipple, and listen to her sigh. Feel her wrap a leg around your waist.

Why did you ever hesitate? 

...

" -- PPDC Security worked in connection with local and US federal to pick up the Seattle branch of a group calling themselves Saints of the Blue Blood. Stormed a compound, and it was ugly, Herc. Dragged a dozen people off, woman swearing and screaming revenge --"

...

One night, two weeks afterwards, you are going back from your office to your quarters. You have been working yourself numb, and it is hours past midnight when you pass by the gym and hear someone on a treadmill down on the lower level, running at a steady, relentless pace. The doorways on the upper track of the gym are open, and as you pass by one, out of reflex, you look to see who it is, then wish you hadn't: you recognize that back. You recognize the dark hair with the streak of blue, and you step back, silently, through the door.

You walk quickly back to your quarters: Mako on a treadmill, running herself to exhaustion at three in the morning. 

The biocompound is, apparently, stored in fat, and three quarters of a piece had Mako giving Herc a handjob under the blanket while you sat next to her. Two pieces had Herc licking her fingers; three pieces had him kissing you. Newt Gesizler ate one piece. Gottlieb and his wife had one. There were seventeen full pieces left in the box when Mako came to your quarters; in the morning, there are ten quarter-slices left.

You -- 

...

You don't remember everything, but you remember enough. 

...

At the infirmary, when they are taking blood and taking tests and photographing for evidence as a two-person team, they find the two bite marks on your shoulders. One left, one right. One a fair amount smaller than the other. 

...

You remember being down on your knees in front of the couch, and doing your level best to give Herc a blowjob -- lips over teeth, breathing through the nose. It doesn't help that Herc a little unclear about the exact mechanics of how to give a good blowjob, so Mako laughed and touched you on the shoulder. _Sensei,_ you remember her saying, in Japanese, _let me._ And she lifted her hair out of the way, kissed the inside of Herc's right knee, and looked up at him. He looked down at her and smiled. Then, Mako shifted a little closer on her knees, paused a moment, then slid her mouth home in one smooth motion that made Herc sigh her name. 

She reached a hand up, and he took it, gripped it until you saw white on his knuckles when she pulled off and ran her lips over the tip. You remember putting your hand on the back of Mako's head and stroking the back of her neck, gently, more to feel how smooth and warm her skin was was than because you had an idea of directing what was happening, though it was Mako, though. She slid back down on Herc, and as long as you had your hand on the back of her mouth, she mouth closed around the base of his dick, tongue working against his underside. 

Then, you take your hand away from the back of her neck. You reach up, touch Herc's wrist, and take his hand. He is holding your hand with his left hand; he is holding Mako's hand with his right. 

With slow, rolling movements of his hips, he starts to fuck Mako's mouth. 

...

Later, that night, you're as certain as you can be that Mako reached down, smiling, and slid you inside her. 

...

Would it have been better if it had been violent? If one of you had wanted it -- maybe, probably, then the other two would have stopped you. What if two of you had wanted it, but one of you hadn't? With the door locked, that could have been exponentially worse. It's cold comfort, though, that you and Herc didn't hold Mako down or that you and Mako didn't hold Herc down. Would that have happened? Did the kaiju biocompound work that way? They're still running on tests. 

Whatever the answer is, you still remember sliding your tongue around Mako's clit. 

You remember how much you liked the taste. 

...

Three weeks after the fact, you're walking down the hallway, in transit from one meeting to another, and you see three technicians walking together. Two women, a man, and one of the women is breaking a bar of chocolate to share with her friends -- you blink, they turn left down another hallway before passing you, and while at your next meeting, you excuse yourself, go to the closest bathroom, walk into a stall, and brace yourself against the wall until the world stops spinning. 

...

At your four week follow-up, they tell you that it looks like you're clean. You'll have to come back for the six-month check-up for anything with a longer timeframe that hasn't showed up, but things look good. Your bloodwork is clean for a man of your age and condition. 

Then, you ask if Mako is pregna -- 

They tell you, gently, that isn't medical information they can share with you. 

...

In the morning, you're the first to wake. You're naked. Mako is naked. Herc is naked. The three of you are on the floor, and your arm is around Mako's bare waist. 

A blanket -- remember that blanket from the night before? -- is pulled down from the couch and wrapped mostly around Mako. Her head is against Herc's shoulder, and your fingers meet Herc's on Mako's hip. Your head feels like it's been split open; there is the taste of ash and chocolate in your mouth. Slowly, carefully, you pull first your hand, then the rest of your body away from Mako. Herc wakes up when you do that -- it takes Mako a little longer to wake. Is it that point about the biochemical compound still being stored in fat tissue? When she does, you see the moment before she remembers what happened. Her eyes open lazy and content, and then, then -- 

There are red marks on her thighs that look like bite marks. High up, red on pale skin. There is one on the left, a little larger than the one on the right. 

Instead of going back to her quarters and showering, Mako gets up, shoulders hunched, and collects her clothes from the floor. She goes into your bedroom, closes the door, and gets dressed. You finish dressing. So does Herc. 

Quietly, wordlessly, the three of you follow the sexual assault protocol and go down to the infirmary. 

...

In the books, you are Victim A. Herc is Victim B. Mako is Victim C. A security bulletin is issued about biological threats to the Shatterdome advising about unexpected packages and food and drink in the strongest possible terms; an internal review is in process. How many people know the identity of Victim A, Victim B, and Victim C? You'd guess a half-dozen people in civilian command over you, an even dozen in the Shatterdome itself. Medical staff. 

The handbook says that priority access to counseling is available if you want it. 

...

You didn't want it. You didn't choose it. Bad enough the loss of bodily control. Worse still, the emotional violation from having wanted it at one point in time, even if you didn't want it before or after. 

Worse than that is the guilt: you're Stacker Pentecost. Isn't there something you could have done differently? Wasn't there a point when you could have asserted your will and stopped it? 

Instead, you have a night's worth of memories that are sinking into you, slowly, but surely: instead, Mako on her knees, nudging you out of the way to put her mouth on Herc. Mako sliding up onto the couch afterwards, her mouth still wet from Herc and tasting like him, too. She kissed you, and you put your hand on waist and pulled her down onto. She was wet to begin with, and with your fingers, with your mouth against the side of her neck while you fucked her, you got her wetter. 

Instead, you remember what Herc's body felt like under yours, flat on the couch underneath you, freckles on his shoulders, and your dick is inside him -- no condoms, no lube, just lotion from the bedroom and the scars from all the Jaegers he has ridden for the PPDC over ten years striping his back and sides. He is gasping in pain, but he twists his head to the side to tell you not to stop, he wants you to fuck him, he wants you to have him, and his face is in Mako's lap, and to give him something to focus on, Mako smears her fingers with chocolate from the box and slides them into his mouth. 

"Bite down," she says, and knowing that he will, you drive yourself all the way into Herc. 

...

Years before, Herc Hansen wrecked his Jaeger because he pulled out, mid-Drift, and went after his brother in the co-pilot motion cradle. Another PPDC scandal, and you were one of the dozen on-base who knew: Herc had seen his brother on top of a woman who was too drunk to fight back effectively, and Herc -- felt strongly about it. 

...

Worse than the sustained nightmare of losing bodily and emotional control, worse than the guilt is this: at some point during that night, you get a nosebleed. 

Mako spots it, and Herc pulls away. He'd been kissing his way down your stomach, but Mako touches him on the shoulder, and he looks up. Mako hands you two tissues, then says, in English, "I'll get ice from the kitchen." You tilt your head back and watch her walk across the living room, naked, and open the freezer. She knows where the ice bag is; she knows to bring you extra tissues on the way back. 

For his part, Herc gets your metharocin box from your suit, opens it, and tucks the dosage between your teeth so that you don't have to look down and fumble, and while they wait for your nose to stop bleeding, Mako tucks against your left shoulder and rests her head against your chest, like she did when you first adopted her. To make himself useful, Herc moves about the living area, twitching pillows back in place, clearing off trash some of the empty chocolate wrappers. Getting a drink of water, then bringing a glass back to Mako. While she drinks, he picks up the blanket on the couch and folds it with sharp, sharp creases. 

These are not strangers. These are not people driven entirely out of their minds by kaiju biocompound. Only partially.

Only the two people that you love best and have left in this world. 

...

Security does what it can to trace the chocolate, and you see the security footage: a woman, dressed in the PPDC base operations staff uniform, face carefully head turned away from the camera in the hallway outside Mako's office -- she slips inside at a quarter past ten while Mako is a regularly scheduled technical briefing. The head of PPDC security, a motherly looking woman with a voice made out of no-alloy titanium, flies in to Long Beach to assume command of the investigation. She tells you that the date was likely planned to coordinate with Mako's standard media relations person being on vacation: confusion, lack of clarity, and the address on the accompanying letter traces to a cash-rental basis warehouse fifteen minutes away.

PPDC security working in conjunction with local forces breaks down the door. It's days empty, and you see the photographs afterwards. Trash. Detritus from people living there for an extended period of time. Traces, the forensic unit finds, in one corner of where the chocolates were manufactured. Evidence of a kaiju protein extraction setup. A high-tech operation. A crate of empty boxes with plastic tray inserts, the same color and type as the one that showed up on Mako's desk. 

...

You and Mako and Herc on the couch, Mako in your lap, Mako riding you, rolling her hips at the top of each of each stroke and whimpering because she is getting close and telling you as much in a mix of Japanese and English. You're close, too, and can taste chocolate in your mouth, in your throat, burning up your veins. Herc reaches forward and puts his arms around Mako's waist. He asks for a turn, so Mako slides off you and onto her elbows and knees. You think you're going to come just from seeing the way that Mako's raises her hips up to Herc, the way Herc's hands fit against her hips, the way Mako gasps against your knee when Herc slides into her, but then Mako slides forward a little more. 

_Fair_ , she says over her shoulder in English, for Herc's benefit. Then, she creeps forward a little more on the couch, still on her knees and elbows, and she puts her mouth around your dick, just the tip, though -- she looks up at you, and slowly, her eyes on you, Herc inside from behind and one hand around the base, she lets Herc fuck her, stroke by stroke, until her mouth is around the hand she has at the base, and then, you watch her take her hand away. You can feel her making noises; you can feel how she is struggling a little to fit you into her mouth now that her hand isn't there anymore, and you let her settle into it. 

You clear her hair away from her face; you run the fingers of your left hand over the back of Mako's until her breathing settles. You put your left hand on Herc's shoulder and let him brace himself against you.

Worse than the memories, worse than the guilt, worse than the knowledge of what you did with the two people you have left in the world -- worst of all is how deep and real the desire felt, how naturally it fit over the love you had for both of them. 

...

When Striker gets reassigned to Sydney, you don't go see Herc before he goes, and he doesn't see you: for years, whenever the two of you happened to be at the same Shatterdome together, the two of you would make it a practice to get together and split a couple beers the night before he while looking down at his Jaeger, readied for transport. You don't know whether he has talked about what happened with Chuck; sooner or later, they're going to be Drifting together, so prudence would call for Herc to talk about it. On the other hand, you don't know how the words will come. What words are possible?

You still haven't been to see a therapist. Medical is becoming insistent in a gentle but firm way. 

...

Two weeks after Striker goes, Mako knocks on your door, and asks if she can come in. It's the first time the two of you have been alone since it happened, and Mako carefully leaves the door open behind her. The two of you are no more than five steps inside the room. 

Mako says, softly, that she knows you've been posted to Lima. 

You tell her that you have. Then, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a little slip of paper: you expect it to be pale blue and to be the orders for her and K-Science to go to Hong Kong, where she'll be rebuilding Gipsy Danger. Instead, it's the white of medical. She says that she knows medical has been coordinating the testing, but she wanted to show you, since apparently, they won't disclose the information to you as a matter of course. 

Your hand is shaking a little when you take the paper, and you look down. The sexual transmission screen is clean, which isn't a surprise, but then you see the highlighted part -- _Pregnancy? NEGATIVE_. 

You look up from the paper to her face, and Mako looks back you. She is trying to keep from crying, you think. She is also trying to decide how to say goodbye: Academy aside, this is the first time the two of you have been posted apart. She will be a hemisphere away, and in the end, she does not bow. Instead, turns her face away, eyes full of tears for a moment. 

She goes without asking for the slip of paper back. 

...

The worst part, Stacker Pentecost, the worst part is that you are still grieving how _unfair_ it feels.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I can't lie. Tamsin is dead in this mostly because I can't figure out how Stacker would tell Tamsin, and the idea of him keeping it a secret from her because she is DYING burns a hole in my gut.
> 
> 2\. . For the general idea of Stacker/Herc/Mako, you can thank [ferricent](http://ferricent.tumblr.com). For the recurring theme of fairness, you can thank [destronomics](http://destronomics.tumblr.com). And thanks to [theprokaryotekid](http://theprokaryotekid.tumblr.com) for letting me ramble about this.


End file.
